Summary

In Chapter 4, as Veronika drifts in and out of consciousness, she hears a female voice ask if Veronika wants to be masturbated. Later, when she is at full consciousness, Veronika cannot recall whether the question was real or whether it was dreamed. Meanwhile, she contemplates the repetitiveness and emptiness of her old life to which she would return after leaving Villete, assuming that she would eventually give in to the demands of both her mother and society to marry and have children. She imagines the trajectory of that marriage from passion to parenthood to resignation to emptiness, realizes that after years of wife-and-mother hood she would probably have neither the desire nor the strength to make another attempt at killing herself, and resolves to end her life before she leaves Villete.

In Chapter 5, Veronika discovers she has been moved out of intensive care and into another part...